11 Email Marketing Best Practices 2021: How To Write Engaging Emails For Your Business

Introduction – 11 Email Marketing Best Practices 2021: How To Write Engaging Emails For Your Business

In this article, we will look at the 11 email marketing best practices for sending engaging, high-converting, and captivating emails for your business.

This article will give you a guide to follow when sending emails to your subscriber list to build a long-term relationship with them and drive traffic to your website and sales to your business.

We’ll also explore some strategies that can help get more email subscribers as well as how an email list can be used in conjunction with other marketing channels like social media campaigns or PPC campaigns!

How To Build Your Email List

Email marketing is one of the most powerful and easiest ways to start growing your business.

It gives you extreme power and flexibility in generating leads, building deep, meaningful relationships with prospects, and ultimately converting these prospects to clients and sales.

Email marketing offers a low-risk, low-commitment way for you to convert your website and social media visitors into prospects.

These prospects can then be nurtured into loyal and long-term customers over the next days, weeks, or even months.

Now that you have decided to start email marketing you need to learn how to grow your email list.

By growing your email list you will have more people to use these strategies we are about to teach you to send more engaging and high-converting emails to.

This helps to boost your sales and profits.

To help you generate more email leads for your business we have prepared this article that gives you 16 highly effective ways to start generating leads for your business using email marketing. You can find that post at 16 Powerful Email Marketing Lead Generation Strategies

Email Marketing Best Practices

Now that you have built up your email list we are going to discuss 11 email marketing best practices to increase your email open rate, your click-through rate, your engagement, and your conversions.

By applying the tips we are about to show you there will be an increase in your email conversions and you will begin to see explosive growth in your business.

We have also included a bonus section to provide you with more tips and articles that will help you to increase the returns on your email marketing investments and get better conversion results for your email marketing campaigns.

That bonus section can be found at the end of the article.

No. 1 Create Engaging Email Subject Lines

The first thing people see when they open an email is the subject line.

If it’s not interesting you’re going to lose them.

One way to make your subject lines more engaging is by adding a poll question or survey at the end of the sentence that will get subscribers engaged and excited about reading.

Another tip for writing more engaging email subject lines that intrigue the reader and pushes them to open your emails is to build curiosity in your email headers.

Start off by stating a little-known fact, brain-teasing point, or highly argumentative or surprising statement that grabs the reader’s attention.

The subject line of your email is one of the biggest deciding factors in whether or not your emails will be opened so it is worth it to put a bit of thought and method into crafting the perfect subject line.

An example of a compelling subject line would be “Is it true that you can’t get pregnant from kissing?”

Ask your subscribers questions such as, “Do you know how to make the perfect turkey burger?” or ask for their opinion on something controversial by asking them what is more important to them while stating an obviously controversial point.

Your subject lines should also be short, spicy, and highly focused on what the email will be about.

No. 2 Keep Your Emails Personal

Email marketing is all about building deep and meaningful relationships with your subscribers.

This relationship is what will drive sales and revenues for years to come.

To build a deep and meaningful relationship with your list you need to get personal with your subscribers.

You need to cater to their needs, their wants, their desires.

You have to help them move away from their pain and towards pleasure by offering helpful information that is unique to them.

One of the ways that you can start building a relationship with your audience is by using a drip campaign that is highly targeted and highly relevant.

We have prepared this article to help you set up your own drip campaign today. You can learn more about using drip campaigns to boost conversions and build deep relationships with your subscribers at 3 Effective Sign-up Drip Campaigns for Effective Email Marketing Conversions

Another way that you can get personal with your audience is by using nurture campaigns to build a deeper and more personal relationship with your subscribers.

Nurture campaigns help you to connect on an emotional level with your subscribers and learn their deepest fears, desires, and problems.

These are highly beneficial in converting them into loyal and high-paying customers down the road because you will know exactly how to help them and they will have an emotional connection with you that tells them that you will help them.

This relationship is built up over weeks or even months of offering nothing but high-value content to your subscribers.

You can learn more about nurture campaigns by checking out this article we wrote to help you at Drip Campaign and Nurture Campaign: The Differences in Email Marketing

No. 3 Use One Clear CTA

In marketing, a Call To Action can be defined as a prompt telling someone what to do.

In crafting highly engaging, high-converting emails to your subscribers you will need to use a CTA that promotes this engagement and conversion.

Your CTA tells your reader what is the desired action that they should take next.

A poor Call To Action will result in poor conversions. It will leave your readers bewildered and confused.

They will not know what to do next and instead of sitting around to figure out what it is you’d like them to do they will leave without doing anything.

Goodbye conversion! Goodbye sale!

Instead, use sharp, easy-to-understand Calls To Action that tells the reader what to do next within two seconds.

Most times and I am also guilty of this, readers will only read the title or subject and then scroll to the call to action while briefly ‘browsing’ the subheadings and bolded points on the way down.

For this reason, it is important to use the right Call To Action at all times.

An example of excellent Calls To Action is “Buy Now,” “Get Offer Now,” “Download Free Report,” “Book My Spot,” or “Watch Video Now.”

We’ve made a point of adding the word ‘now’ to most of the examples to invoke urgency and try to induce a feeling of scarcity as can be seen from the “Book My Spot” example.

Your Call To Action is the driving force behind your conversions. Spend enough time working on it.

Speaking of conversions we’d like to share our free eBook with you to help you learn 26 reasons why your website is scaring away your customers. It will help you boost your website’s conversions drastically. You can download the book here.

No. 4 Make It Easy To Read

As was stated in the previous point on using an effective Call To Action, at times readers will not read all your content.

Instead, they will read the subject line, the heading, subheadings, bolded points, lists, and then the Call To Action when they get there.

But there is no need to despair that your emails are not being read. That is why I am here.

Instead of despairing, you should now use this information to your advantage to place the most important information in these sections of your email.

Make your email easy to read by:

1. Using short, concise, and easy to understand sentences
2. Breaking up long paragraphs with headings, subheadings, and lists
3. Avoiding jargon and industry-specific words that the reader may not understand
4. Making your emails as short as possible
5. Only discussing one point in each email

No. 5 Mobile-Friendliness Is Key

Today it is reported that up to 81% of emails are opened and read on mobile. 81% is astounding!

That means that if you neglect the need to have your emails be mobile-friendly you will only be reaching 19% of the people who open your emails.

Mobile-friendliness is key.

You need to make sure that your emails are viewable and readable on all mobile devices, not just on desktop/laptop and tablet devices.

Most email service providers like Mailchimp, Active Campaign, and FluentCRM allow you to preview your email on mobile devices before sending them.

This helps you prevent sending out ineffective and unreadable emails that will only frustrate your readers who are trying to read them where they love to – on their smartphones.

No. 6 Send Email From Your Personal Name, Not A Generic Group

Building on our previous point of building a deep relationship with your email subscribers by getting personal we would also like to make the point of sending your email using a person and not a generic group.

This person should have their name and profile picture in the footer of the mail.

It would also help if they had a link to their social media profiles listed as well as some other contact information like your personal/business email address.

Additionally, as a bonus, you can add your position or job title for the company you’re representing.

People love to connect with humans over the screen and it’s easier and more meaningful when you know more about the person you are receiving emails from and are confident they are real.

Adding this human element will add a personal touch to all your emails.

Even listing the name of your email account as “Name from company name” can also be helpful for your open rates, click-through, and conversions.

No. 7 Start Off With An Engaging Preview

When someone opens their email inbox they generally tend to browse the previews of their emails as well as the subject line after they have looked at the name of the sender.

This is your opportunity to wow them and nudges them into opening your emails.

If you have followed the guide to this point you would be in the green at this stage.

Your subject line would’ve grabbed their attention and have them storming to open your email to learn more about your claim or grab this special, limited-time offer.

They also have a personal relationship with you and know you by name. They see your email and think “Oh, Jabez from CyberDream Developers? This’ll be good!”

And now they see the preview to the email that not only builds on the subject but increases their curiosity.

Your open rates have now gone through the roof!

You’re welcome.

No. 8 Utilise A Welcome Drip Campaign

When someone subscribes to your mailing list it is the perfect time to reach out to them.

Matter of fact, we can argue that they want to be reached out to, that they want to hear from you immediately.

This is evident in the fact that welcome emails have a 86% higher open rate than general emails, have a 196% higher click-through rate, and a jaw-dropping 320% higher conversion rate.

This is a great opportunity to introduce yourself and your business, so make sure you use a welcome email that can also be added to an email drip campaign for the perfect introduction.

An email drip campaign is a sequence of emails that are sent to your email subscriber list or a segment of it after some trigger has been activated.

An example here could be that when someone is added to your subscriber list a trigger is activated that welcomes them to your company in 3 emails.

We have created a guide on using drip emails like welcome emails to help you with this step.

In fact, there are three welcome email templates in this sequence that you can use to improve your own email marketing.

You can find that guide and welcome emails that you can take and use for yourself at 3 Effective Sign-up Drip Campaigns for Effective Email Marketing Conversions

No. 9 Split-Test Everything

A split test in marketing is when you have two different versions of the same thing, and test which one performs better.

In email marketing, you would keep one version of your email as the control version and then create different versions of one variable that has been changed across multiple other versions.

For example, you might split test your email subject line to see which gives the best open rate by writing five or six different subject lines that will be used in your split test and sent to a small part of your email subscriber list.

The subject line that is opened the most is the split-test winner and will be chosen as the subject line for the campaign that will be sent to the entire list.

You can continue the split-test by testing the body of the email, the send time, the call to action, or any other editable part of the email.

You can even split-test the best image or email format to use to give the best results.

–Pro: You are able to see what works best for your audience

–Con: It can be time-consuming when sending a lot of emails out

No. 10 Send At The Best Times

There have been numerous studies on when is the best time to send emails.

There have also been numerous reports and claims on how often you are to send emails to your subscribers.

I will not make a claim as to the best time here because I know that every business is different and depending on the location, target audience, demographics, the aim of the email, and a myriad of other variables the ideal sending time will change.

For this reason, I will say that the best time to send is now. Right now.

The second best time to send, however, is after you have determined so by using a split-test.

That is to say, don’t let the worry of choosing the best time to send stop you from ever sending your email so go ahead and send it right now.

Additionally, you shouldn’t just be relaxed and satisfied that you have found the best time to send.

Instead, continue to split-test until you have empirical evidence of the best time.

No. 11 Don’t Oversell

Do not oversell in your emails!

Let me say that again for those who are just waking up from me yelling – Do not oversell in your emails!

Only about 20% of your emails should have commercial intent. No more and no excused.

Remember, the goal of your email marketing campaign should be to offer value and build a relationship. That is what you should spend 80% of your time doing.

This 80% of your time spent building relationships will pay off massively with sales for the 20% of times you ask for a commercial finish.

That is because the thing that drives conversions is trust that is built from having a relationship with subscribers.

If you could get a sale, client, or customer without those things email marketing would be dead.

But you can’t so we use email marketing and while we’re using email marketing let us use it the right way for maximum return with the least amount of effort.

To that end, you should always use a CTA.

Then, how do I use a CTA if I’m not selling?

It’s simple; ask your subscribers open-ended questions that promote conversation.

An open-ended question is one that prompts the subscriber to answer in their own words or thoughts.

An open-ended question can be anything from asking about what keeps them busy, to how they feel about a particular topic/topic area, to questions related to the specific content you’ve published, and so on.

You should also tell them that you read all replies even if you don’t get to answer them all.

Don’t just say it, though, show it!

Reply to your subscribers when you can and even shout out their replies in future emails to incentivize subscribers to reply when they read.

Bonus Section – Master Email Marketing With These Free Resources

We have prepared a list of helpful resources to help you master email marketing today.

We want to help you on your journey to online success and so we have decided to link below some helpful articles and guides to help you on your email marketing journey. Feel free to use them to as much as possible.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to do all the heavy lifting you can get a free consultation from our team and we will help you on your journey to success.

Additionally, you can sign up for a Cyber Site Online Presence for as low as $1,200 per month. You will get a website that grows your business that is built with a 12-month marketing strategy for your business. It will be fully managed and marketed by our team.

You can get your Cyber Site Online Presence here.

Here is a list of those extra resources we mentioned

1. Email Marketing Benefits: 22 Powerful Email Marketing Benefits To Grow Your Business
2. Email Marketing Conversion Tips: Email Marketing to Grow Your Business: 15 Powerful Conversion Tips
3. Email Marketing Lead Generation: 16 Powerful Email Marketing Lead Generation Strategies
4. Digital Marketing Strategy: 1 Powerful Digital Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses and Startups
5. Nurture Campaigns: Drip Campaign and Nurture Campaign: The Differences in Email Marketing
6. Drip Campaigns: 3 Effective Sign-up Drip Campaigns for Effective Email Marketing Conversions
7. Website Conversion Optimization: 10 Worst Reasons Your Website Isn’t Converting
8. Lead Generation Complete Guide: Lead Generation Complete Guide: From Basic To 5 Powerful Strategies
9. Is Email Marketing Dead? Is Email Marketing Dead In 2021?
10. Marketing Tips For Small Businesses & Startups: Powerful Marketing Tips For Small Businesses In 2021: How To Get Explosive Growth

We hope you find these articles helpful on you journey to online success.

Conclusion – 11 Email Marketing Best Practices 2021: How To Write Engaging Emails For Your Business

Email marketing is a powerful tool for small businesses to grow their customer base and generate more revenue.

Email marketing is an effective way to grow your business and reach potential customers who are not aware of your brand.

It’s also a great tool for maintaining customer loyalty because it allows you to communicate directly with them without having to spend time on social media or other digital channels.

By following the 11 best practices discussed here, you’ll be able to optimize your email campaigns for higher open rates, engagement rates, click-throughs, conversions, and sales.

If you want help getting started, get in touch!

We can provide the expertise and know-how needed to create an email strategy that will work brilliantly for your company.

Get in contact today so we can start planning how our team at CyberDream Developers will use these 11 best practices discussed here as part of a successful email marketing campaign tailored specifically for your needs!

Comment below with any questions or concerns about this blog post and we will gladly answer them.